New vocational courses come at fag end of session in Delhi schools

NEW DELHI: There are just a few months to go for this school year to get over but not late enough, apparently, to launch vocational courses. The Directorate of Education has also asked two vocational courses selected by schools to be replaced by new ones. "Classroom teaching" will start from November 16. The DoE is introducing vocational education for ninth-graders from the current academic year -2015-16 -in 205 of its secondary and senior-secondary schools. The heads of these schools were asked to offer two vocational courses from a list of eight; the student could pick one as an additional subject. This was to be done on the pattern of the centrally-sponsored National Skill Qualifications Framework.

Now the DoE has discovered that of the eight originally decided on, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) "has...expressed its inability to grant afficiliation to two." A circular from November 6 says the two subjects are "beauty and wellness" and "general duty assistant (health sector)." The circular says of the 205, 21 picked only those two to offer and 73 other picked at least one of the two. They are now being asked to "opt for any two of the six [remaining] vocational subjects...in consultation with students." Clearly books aren't in place yet as the ciruclar says ," Efforts are being made to arrange text books/ study material for each of these six vocational subjects" and "all the schools will be provided with qualified vocational trainers/ teachers through vocational training partners in each of the six subjects."

The circular advises heads of school to keep the roll-strength of each section at about 50 and create as many sections as they need. The ninth-grade time-table has also been redrawn to accommodate the extra subject. "According [to the timetable], workload of full time vocational trainer/teacher [will be] made available to school can be worked out. In cases where a large number of students have opted for any vocational subject, requirement of additionl vocational trainer/ teacher for that subject must be immediately communicated to vocational branch....Other logistic[al] requirements of the schools due to implementation of vocational subjects will also be met...in due course of time," adds the circular.